Talk:Oklahoma earthquake swarms (2009–present)

Sources

• Holland, Austin Adams; Gibson, Amie; Toth, Christopher R. (November 12, 2013). "Southern Arcadia Lake, November 2013 earthquake swarm" (PDF). Oklahoma Geological Survey.
• "Recent Earthquakes: Town Hall Meeting, June 26, 2014" (PDF). Oklahoma Geological Survey. June 26, 2014.

Comments

Please put comments below, if you have any. Dustin (talk) 18:39, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Is the land sinking? The water looks to be repumped deeper than the oil wells. The land may be shaking downward - NASA can measure. Bakersfield, CA sunk several feet - not sure if they had quakes. 2601:181:8000:D6D0:A0BB:4771:2F52:F40B (talk) 01:31, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Tasks

• Earthquakes in the Cushing Region ([1]) - This may possibly be added to #2015 and #Potential damage. Dustin (talk) 17:22, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
• A Century of Induced Earthquakes in Oklahoma ([2]) - This subject may be added as a research topic to #Background and #2015. Dustin (talk) 17:22, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I've added info from the "Century" reference above to the Background and Cause sections. Also, the research since 2014 is clear on attributing the sharp increase in activity to high volume wastewater injection so I've added that near the top of the 1st paragraph. --mikeu ^talk 21:29, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

@Mu301: I've been a bit busy, and since I didn't have much time available, I created this section on to remind me what to look at upon finding the time. I didn't notice your additions until now, but I appreciate the help! Dustin (talk) 01:24, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oklahoma Now No. 1 in Earthquakes ([3]) - It is uncertain what the context in which this was said is or whether the statement is only valid for November 11. Evaluate.

@Dustin V. S.: Shaken more than 580 times, Okla. is top state for quakes in 2014, however, this source also states "Scientists generally judge Alaska separately. Alaska had more than 2,600 quakes last year, more than all other states combined." The USGS confirms that CA was second to Alaska until 2014 when OK surpasses it to take 2nd place. So, this should be read as No. 1 in the Contiguous United States.[4] I find the nymag statement "Oklahoma now experiences more earthquakes than anywhere else on planet Earth" dubious. If that were true the US would have more than Japan, Indonesia, etc. Which Country has the most earthquakes? The same spokesperson quoted in nymag also made the remarkably unscientific statement "the world is going through a seismic phase." I would judge that this person is authoritative on the actions that OK is taking to mitigate the problem, but not qualified to objectively assess the activity in comparison to other parts of the world. It is possible that the activity within a small area of OK is globally unique but I have not found a reliable source for that assertion. --mikeu ^talk 14:00, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I thought the statement was dubious in nature so I thought it necessary to look into it more in-depth, but it seems you have already examined the issue. I was a rather busy until now, so I appreciate your help. Dustin (talk) 05:25, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• Earthquake table: Would it be worthwhile to create a table for earthquakes with magnitudes in excess of 4.0? In light of the recent 5.1M earthquake, I think such a table may be necessary. Dustin (talk) 20:34, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
• Induced Earthquakes Raise Chances of Damaging Shaking in 2016 ([5]) - This appears to be a very noteworthy report. Information from this report may be added to #2015–16 and #Potential damage, although other sections may qualify as well. Dustin (talk) 18:57, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
• Focus on Kansas: It seems that southern Kansas, governmental response there, etc. has been insufficiently described in this article. This is a higher priority task in terms of significance. Dustin (talk) 23:08, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • '@Mu301:, @Dustin V. S.:, {ping|TallCorgi}} Thanks to you all for your substantial efforts to keep the articles on the 2011 the 2016 quakes and the Oklahoma "swarms" articles coherent and informative. It's quite a task, especially during rapidly evolving events. When my time gets a bit more free, I'll try to include the nearly identical southern Kansas situation which shares the industrial, governmental, political and geological problems (the Arbuckle) with northern Oklahoma. At 4.9 magnitude, the largest quake in the recently densely fracked area of Kansas was in the small town of Milan, a couple of years ago. Activist (talk) 22:03, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
  • '@Dustin V. S.: Correcting ping address, re: earthquake/talk edits. Activist (talk) 22:21, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    • @Activist: Thanks for being willing to contribute! For the most part, few other people have contributed (with some exceptions), so any help is appreciated. You'll notice that the main map says "Oklahoma Area Seismicity", so it accounts for earthquakes in southern Kansas as well as the (apparently now ended) seismicity in North Texas. I'll quickly note that these earthquakes are most-closely tied to wastewater injection rather than the injection of fluids associated with fracking, although a varying amount of wastewater is produced from fracked wells. All that said, Kansas really needs to be covered a bit more deeply in this article. My biggest issue is that I don't know how I'd go about formatting/organizing Kansas information along with Oklahoma information. Heck, just coming up with the current format took a lot of time and thought. Dustin (talk) 00:14, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
      • @Dustin V. S.:, @Mu301:, {ping|TallCorgi}} Hi, Dustin. I'll try to pitch in, but I'm immensely busy at the moment. I'm also helpful on textual content and editing, but not on physical article structure. The Kansas Geological Survey may be a good source, but like the OGS, they are affected by funding and oil-favoring politics. The Wichita Eagle has covered the Kansas fracking extensively. One writer on it has been Stan Finger. Also, Energy and Environment News correspondent Mike Soragham has been covering it very well. Some of his articles are on the Wikipedia pages for the 2011 quake and the "swarms" page. The fracking can cause quakes, of course, but the vast majority are coming from much deeper, in the Arbuckle formation, saturated with immense quantities of "brine." The wells in the Mississippean formation take considerable dewatering, typically, with about 10 bbls of water for every bbl of crude. So dumping as much as they can has exacerbated the problems, I think. The crash in oil prices has probably saved many a home in both states, though has made the operators more desperate. I suspect that they are more reckless than usual, trying to stay afloat. Of the two majors in KS and northern OK, Sandridge recently filed for bankruptcy and Chesapeake is said to be shaky. Shell exited a couple of years ago. The OK/KS quake field has extended to northern TX, near and west of the I-35, but there are also quakes coming from the Eagle Shale field, for instance, much further south. The worst have been around Enid and Perry, I think, but Medford runs a close third. The OCC shut down a well in Cherokee, a few years ago, when the area was rockin' and rollin', so it must have been pretty bad. Activist (talk) 10:26, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
• 2009–10 earthquakes: This article lacks a section dedicated to the early phase of the earthquake surge, so it is significant that such events be covered. Dustin (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
• Add additional detail about the sworn testimony of former Oklahoma state seismologist Austin Holland, who has admitted to being hassled by the former Dean of the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, Larry Grillot, among others, when it came to information and research for public release. Master of Time (talk) 05:55, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

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• Note: Earthquake animation has been updated. Sadly, I did not learn about it until now and as such it is already two weeks old. Dustin (talk) 18:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

5.3M Cushing earthquake

@Orca1 9904: (and others) -- How should this be handled? If it hadn't been for the September earthquake near Pawnee, I'd create an article. I created a redirect at November 2016 Oklahoma earthquake. All these earthquakes are historically significant, but I'm unsure how to respond at the moment. Dustin (talk) 02:14, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

It has been downgraded to 5.0, so article prospects have diminished greatly. Dustin (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Energy release

Where does the energy for these earthquakes come from? Is it from the water that is being forced into the ground, or is it from natural geological forces due to plate tectonics? If it is the latter, then the earthquakes will occur some day whether we pump water into the ground or not. It seems to me that it's better if this energy is released in a lot of small earthquakes than in occasional big earthquakes. In that case, maybe this injection of wastewater, causing small earthquakes, is actually a good thing. Does anyone know, or have a source we can cite on this? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:08, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

The released energy is from naturally occurring stresses. However, the area isn't being actively compressed or anything, so those stresses aren't accumulating at present. The quakes aren't acting as a "safety valve" for any kind of future seismicity, I'm afraid. (Would welcome a more in-depth explanation from an expert; seismology is a bit outside my field.)--209.142.180.141 (talk) 17:52, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Possible page move

Since it has been years since this page's creation (2014) which has seen the page renamed multiple times to account for the changing years, should we choose a potentially more stable title? Perhaps we could move the years to the end and put them in parentheses, as in Oklahoma earthquake swarms (2009–present)? Master of Time (talk) 09:47, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Is the swarm even occurring anymore?

This article hasn't been updated in a long-ass time, is this even happening still? Alpha Piscis Austrini (talk) 18:56, 21 July 2022 (UTC)